Bea slows. “Are you sure?”
I nod. It hurts, but I need to be standing for this. As soon as my feet hit the floor, the pain rockets through me again, but I grit my teeth, offer Bea a grateful but pained smile, and we enter the lunch hall.
Lilia is already there. Already at Naomi’s table. And before I can even call out, before Naomi can even react—
Lilia slaps her.
Hard.
And all hell breaks loose.
Paris
Four years ago
I sit at a crowded dinner table, surrounded by family, friends… other guests I have seen many times before, and yet I still haven’t memorized most of their names.
Partly because I stopped wanting to know after the “guests”’ mother started staying over at night, but also because unlike my sister, I didn’thaveto learn them.
She sure does love her guests.
It’s strange how you can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely. If you would have asked me a few years ago what loneliness is, I would have said what most people think—the absence of people. I’m only just figuring out that loneliness isn’t being alone, it’s feeling unseen. It’s the aching realisation that no matter how many voices surround you, no one will ever truly hear you.
In the Brooks house, I am the invisible one. I’m the ghost. And loneliness, eventually, became a familiar. A constant companion whispering that maybe some souls are just meant to walk their paths unloved and uncared for.
My sister, though, everyone loves her. My parents handed her all of the responsibility because in their words, I’m “unfit” to do anything at all. And I suppose, in many ways, they’re right.
I don’t speak. Well, sometimes I can, but I don’t want to. And my parents warned me from the moment they found out that I shouldn’t.
Apparently having a daughter with a stutter is too humiliating for them to handle.
I didn’t used to mind it, but that was before the multitude of times I managed to embarrass myself and my family in social gatherings because of my inability to say anything at certaintimes, or when I’d get stuck on some letters during important conversations.
Saying one single word shouldn’t be so hard for me when it’s so easy for everyone else. I always wondered why that is, why something so easy for everyone else became so hard for me. Why my mind is constantly at war with my mouth. The words are right there, why do they keep fading?
I’ve tried for years. To control my words, to contort them and shape them. Shift them and move them into wacky, funky orders. All that got me was a couple of strange looks and a mouth wide open with no words coming out of it.
So I stopped trying for a while. Stopped raising my hand, stopped calling out, stopped picking up the phone. The world became quieter and quieter, but inside… inside I screamed.
Because my thoughts are endless, but my mouth rejects them, and it almost feels like a betrayal. Words are a blessing that so many people don’t understand.
You don’t completely realize their importance until you lose them.
To my left is my sister, looking flawless as always. As radiant as ever. Berlin never needed to try—she could simply smile, and the world would turn its gaze toward her. People always notice. Even now, my mother’s eyes never leave her, like she’s the only thing in the room worth looking at. Worth loving. The golden daughter. The sun.
I am not the sun. I am not golden. I am the moon. Reflecting light that was never mine in the first place. I am nothing without her glow, just a dim, cold thing lingering in the background.
I have spent my entire life in her orbit, in the shadows of her brilliance—existing only in the spaces she does not fill. And she fills everything.
She’s the sun, I’m the moon. She’s the fire, and I’m the smoke. Drifting, fading, disappearing long before anyone noticed I was ever there at all.
She tells me how exhausting it is, how heavy the expectations are for her to carry around. She wants me to pity her. To tell her it’s unfair. But how can I when I would trade places with her in a heartbeat? I would take the weight, the expectations, the pressure—because at least it would mean I mattered. At least it would mean our parents saw me.
But she doesn’t. She never has.
I have never been rejected, never been cast aside. Because that would require a choice. And I was never a choice. I was the extra, the afterthought, the space between the important things.
I’m not the wrong choice; I’m no choice at all.
